Using data visualisation to identify trends and patterns in fire risk across London

Background

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) is the largest fire and rescue service in the UK employing approximately 7,000 staff of which 5,800 are operational firefighters and officers. It is the third largest firefighting organisation in the world, protecting people and property from fire within the 1587 square kilometres of Greater London. The LFB always responds to fires and other emergencies, but its work has changed over the years with a much stronger emphasis now on fire prevention and community safety.

LFB’s GIS Manager Ray Hooper says that the reporting of incidents by borough was something LFB wanted to present in a visual format. Part of the LFB’s remit is to provide borough level reporting to show how it is reporting across different categories of fire in each area. “One of our senior management saw InstantAtlas at a presentation and realised it would be good to show borough reporting data.”

Getting started

Ray Hooper set up the borough reporting using LFB data. He created the reports in such a way that individual users can customize them by adding as many function buttons as they want. He says the drop down menus also make the reports easy to use.

Meeting the need

The reports are designed to be used borough commanders and senior management. The statistics team has already held several ‘show and tell’ meetings with them and the feedback has been very positive. “I’m sure this will continue to be positive once more people are aware of its existence,” says Ray.

Future developments

Ray thinks that data presentation should be used for more projects other than borough reporting. For instance one area he is interested in looking into is sickness levels across different departments.This sort of internal reporting can be very useful in helping LFB determine whether there are parts of the organization that require closer attention. “We don’t just have to think about London Borough. InstantAtlas opens up all sorts of possibilities,” says Ray.

Watch the London Fire Brigade presentation at the InstantAtlas 2012 User Conference

Click image for larger view of the LFB report

All LFB InstantAtlas reports are for internal use only, If you would like more information please contact marketing@instantatlas.com

Key Benefits

Data is given a geographic or visual context and is much easier to interpret